Drawing Attention to Drawing: Eileen Adams
Date uploaded: March 24, 2014
DRAWING ATTENTION TO DRAWING
Eileen Adams
Commissioned and published by ixia, the public art think tank
Introduction
Artists and designers draw to help them grasp hold of an idea and give it some kind of form in order to work on it. They draw to organise thoughts, to explore a hypothesis, to consider alternatives and shape up possibilities. Drawing allows them to experiment, to develop, refine, test out and modify their thinking, to solve problems and visualise possible outcomes. It enables them to communicate with others.
Students in schools use drawing for similar purposes. TEA (drawing as thinking, expression and action) was one of a number of professional development programmes initiated by The Campaign for Drawing to focus on the role of drawing in general education. It resulted in Eileen Adams creating a collection of online resources based on case studies prepared by art and design teachers to illuminate ways in which students in secondary schools used drawing. < http://t2.nadfas.net/ > the resources explain how drawing can help shape the process of learning as well as result from it. It is not only possible to learn to draw: we can also draw to learn. This paper explores the purposes of drawing, and identifies some issues that emerged in the TEA programme about the use of drawing in schools.
About the author:
Eileen Adams is a freelance consultant whose work links art, design, environment and education. In her career over 40 years, she has worked as a teacher, a teacher educator, a researcher, examiner and writer. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eileen’s research interests included themes such as inter-professional collaboration in education, young people’s participation in environmental change and the school as a learning environment. In the 1990s, public art featured importantly. Since 2001, Eileen’s work with The Campaign for Drawing has focused on learning through drawing. Eileen shares the results of her work through publications, conference papers and courses.
Download Drawing Attention to Drawing Eileen Adams Final Mar 2014.pdf(166 KB)